Making Distinctions between Migrants
in Western Countries, 1945-2010
Marlou Schrover & Deirdre M. Moloney (eds)
imiscoe Research
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Making a difference
Marlou Schrover and Deirdre Moloney
Introduction
All people are equal, according to Thomas Jefferson, but all migrants are not. States differentiate explicitly between categories of migrants
(e.g., colonial, refugee, labour and family), and they differentiate im-plicitly according to categories of analysis, such as gender, class, religion and ethnicity. The relationship between gender and categorisation is twofold. In the first place, the ability to move between the categories of migrants is different for men and for women. Secondly, ideas about gender, together with those from other categories of analysis (e.g., class, religion and ethnicity), shape debates in the media and policies, as this volume makes clear. The contributions in this volume describe and an-alyse how in a number of countries – France, the usa, Turkey, Canada, Mexico, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark – distinctions between migrants were made and justified in policies and in public debates. The countries examined are similar enough to make valuable comparisons, while being sufficiently varied to lead to interesting conclusions. Each of the countries has significant and diverse groups of migrant popula-tions. Several have large groups of migrants from earlier colonial or neo-colonial relationships with other societies; and all have developed important policies on migration and refugees, at least since the mid 20th century. Several of the major migrant groups have religious tra-ditions that differ from those of the majority population, which often leads to conflict and controversies about national identities and social roles. About half of the countries have encouraged multiculturalism, while the other countries have not.
catego-ries of migrants examined. All authors address the intersection of gen-der with other categories of analysis.
We have selected our subjects for four major reasons. In the first place, (re-)categorisations and processes of (re-)labelling can best be studied at nodal points: moments of debate (Laclau & Mouffe 1985). It is at such times that boundaries are redrawn or justified. Secondly, changes in categorisation typically occur only following longer peri-ods of debate, or after repeated debate. Debates in the media generally lead to policy changes only later (if at all). Thirdly, in order to look at how authorities differentiate between categories of migrants (colonial, refugee, labour and family) it is necessary to study debates that relate to these different categories of migrants holistically rather than to look at each in isolation. Lastly, since we want to focus on gender, this is part of the debates chosen, preferably in combination with other categories of analysis, such as class, ethnicity and religion.
When one route closes, another may open. We analyse when and why this happens. Opportunities to use a different route, furthermore, differ according to gender. Migrant men, for instance, were more likely than migrant women to be accused of ‘misusing’ the possibilities for family migration when they moved from the category of labour migrants to that of family migrants.
People tend to think in categories because simplification makes the social world understandable and manageable (Boyd & Richerson 1987). According to Bourdieu (1980), categorisation is a struggle to impose definitions of divisions within society and, hence, of making and unmaking social groups. Categorisation does not describe social order but rather shapes and reshapes power relations, according to Foucault (1980). We define categorisation as the grouping of individuals into col-lective entities that come with rights (or the denial thereof). Authorita-tive institutions, states above all, use formalised categorisations that are artificial (Brubaker, Loveman & Stamatov 2004: 33). Foucault’s (1988, 1991) notion of governmentality depends on these categorisations (Burchell, Gordon & Miller 1991). Governmentality does not refer to the government, but to the many heterogeneous and pervasive ways in which the conduct of individuals and groups is shaped and directed. We define governmentality as practices (mentalities, rationalities and techniques) through which subjects are governed, and the techniques and strategies by which a society is rendered governable. The discur-sive mechanisms act as technologies of governance by which groups are constituted as a problem in need of a policy response (Gray 2006). Dis-cursive mechanisms make issues visible so that they can be governed (Wiebel 2010: 16). States have the authority to decide who is who and to differentiate rights accordingly (Bourdieu 1994). In doing so, they create gender differences. Categorisation is used to legitimise differ-ences within policies and between groups of people. Categorisations are constantly renewed with the intention to exclude or deny rights (mostly) or to include and grant rights (rarely). Categorisation results in debates and a constant redrawing of boundaries; we address these in this volume. Scholars, as a rule, tend to follow the categorisations that policymakers use. In part, this is the result of the source material that is available and organised according to these categorisations. We take a different approach. By looking at different categories of migrants we analyse how migrants move between categories, how and why policy implementers use categories, and how use of these categories differs according to gender.
parlia-mentary papers, non-governmental organisation (ngo) archives, court cases and newspaper articles. Policymakers fear public unrest, which as a rule means media coverage. Courts and lawyers know that via media coverage and political debates individual cases can become precedents. We place this public sphere – defined by Habermas (1989) as the theatre for deliberation and debating – centre stage in this volume. We trace how concepts were introduced and used, how demarcations were made and justified, how changes occurred over time, and how these aspects differed according to gender. We show that personification was used as a strategy to change labels, and the ways in which precedent cases were drawn on to force decisions in other cases. By personification, we mean that one person – often a woman or a child – is made the figurehead of a campaign that aims to change policy and frequently leads to (re-) categorisation. Personification as a strategy has had different outcomes for migrant men and women, as we will show.
This introductory chapter accomplishes two things. First, it provides an overview of the literature on gender and migration. It also presents an overview of the literature on three themes that have led to exten-sive public and political debate: refugee migration, family migration and multiculturalism. Our overview on these themes is not extensive, since Schacher, Walaardt, Boyd & Nowak, and Oxford, in their respec-tive chapters, provide overviews of the literature on refugee migra-tion; Raissiguier, Van Walsum, Legêne & Jones, and Oxford do so for ‘family’; and Cederberg, Andreassen, and Schrover do so for multi- culturalism.
There is now a very large literature on gender and migration, and it is not possible, or useful, to offer a synthesis of it. There are, obviously, many differences between migrant men and women. As a result, there is not one unified theory of gender and migration (Donato et al. 2006; Sinke 2006). Differences according to gender have been observed, for instance, regarding the trajectories that migrants follow, the networks they use, the ties that they maintain, their employment niches, and the opportunities and restrictions they encounter. Theories have been developed that aim to explain all these differences. These theories are discussed in the first part of this chapter. We add to this body of the-ory by focusing on gender, migration and categorisation in the public sphere. This is addressed in the second part of this chapter and devel-oped further in our concluding chapter.
1 Most studies on gender and migration are about women and mi-gration, rather than comparing migrant men and migrant women. Women’s roles and femininity are addressed, but men’s roles and masculinity rarely are.
2 The concept of intersectionality was introduced several decades ago to emphasise that categories of power and identity – such as class, gender and ethnicity – intersect. The concept has been advocated, but has rarely been applied empirically.
3 The literature pays ample attention to the feminisation of migra-tion, which is presented as a new phenomenon. This occurs without offering much proof and without making clear what feminisation means.
4 Some authors address differences between migrant men and women when it comes to migration patterns, networks and transnational ties.
5 The literature on gender and migration focuses on the private sphere and family, and pays less attention to the work sphere. When the work sphere is addressed, much of that literature concentrates on domestic servants. Furthermore there is an emphasis on prostitu-tion and related issues.
6 There is a rather large literature on gender, citizenship and residency status.
7 In recent years, there has been a shift in the academic literature to-ward debates about headscarves and veiling which closely follows shifts in political and public discourse.
State of the art: The literature on gender and migration
Sex and gender; masculinity and femininity
Since ‘gender’ has a variety of meanings, it is useful to clarify the term before proceeding. ‘Gender’ and ‘sex’ are frequently used as synonyms, with a preference for ‘gender’ over ‘sex’ (Haig 2004). ‘Gender’ is used when actually ‘women’ are meant (Lenz et al. 2002; Calavita 2006). This is confusing. It is therefore helpful to return to 1955, when Money first used the term ‘gender’ – which was at that time a grammatical concept – as a category of analysis because the concept ‘sex’ was inadequate for the description of social identities (Money 1955). ‘Sex’ relates to the identification of an individual based on his or her biological endow-ments and functions. Gender is the constitutive element of social rela-tionships, and particularly relationships of power, based on perceived differences between the sexes (Scott 1986).
Gender is concerned with the ascription of social characteristics such as ‘womanly’, ‘manly’, ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’. It is a normative concept, and relates to behaviour that is expected of men or women. Theories on gender emphasise the need to look at who has the power to define which differences are relevant. Gender roles are internalised and institutionalised (in laws and regulations). Gender refers to the con-struction, organisation and maintenance of masculinity and feminin-ity. Masculinity and femininity describe the roles that men and women are assigned, or assume, and roles that they are expected to perform, which affect how gender is institutionalised and embedded in laws and regulations. Ideas on this differ per country, and by context, and they often change over time. Migrants might adapt and change roles depending on whether they are with co-ethnics or others, or when vis-iting their country of origin. Roles are situational and fluid. Although masculinity and femininity, and thus gender are fluid constructions, a static male/female binary is implicitly or explicitly used in social life and entrenched in laws and policies (Scott 1986; Scott 1988, 1998; Cala-vita 2006). Gender is a constitutive element of social relationships, particularly of relationships of power, based on perceived differences between the sexes (Scott 1986: 1067). Characteristics change over time, are culturally variable, and are not necessarily linked to the sex of an individual (Browne 2007: 1).
later, but without applying gender as an analytical category, and hence, without systematically explaining differences between migrant men and women. Much of the earlier research was descriptive. To compen-sate for the absence of women in early studies, research on gender and migration originally focused on women rather than on gender (Anthias & Yuval-Davis 1992; Lutz, Phoenix & Yuval-Davis 1995; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2000; Anthias & Lazaridis 2000; Knörr & Meier 2000; Sharpe 200l; Morokvasic, Erel & Shinozaki 2003; Oishi 2005; Donato et al.
2006; Piper 2007). These studies do contribute to our understanding of the gendered nature of migration, but the added value of an approach that compares men to women is widely acknowledged (Lenz et al. 2002; Morokvasic, Erel & Shinozaki 2003).
Rather surprisingly, the idea still prevails that studies about men and migration are not about gender. There was initially little compari-son between femininity and masculinity. Recent studies, however, do examine masculinity and migration (Connell 1993; España-Maram 2006; McKay 2007; Hansen 2008; Nobil Ahmad 2008; Ryan & Webster 2008; Nobil Ahmad 2011). Walaardt in this volume looks at how mas-culinity and migration intersect.
Intersectionality
Recent literature has emphasised the importance of simultaneously studying the multiple dimensions of durable social inequality (for an overview of the literature see Schrover & Yeo 2010). The concept of intersectionality emphasises that an interaction between power rela-tions works to include or exclude people (Crenshaw 1989; Tilly 1998; McCall 2005; Boris 2005; Phoenix & Pattynama 2006; Sassen 2006; Davis 2008). Changes in power, equality (or inequality), and identity can thus be explained only when categories of exclusion and inclusion are studied together (McCall 2005).
In practice, it has proven difficult to think about two or more cat-egories simultaneously. Rather than thinking from a cumulative per-spective, as the theory of intersectionality stipulates, researchers tend to think first in terms of hierarchies, and then move towards answering questions, such as ‘in this case does gender trump ethnicity’ or vice versa. Furthermore, individuals’ identity goes beyond merely their class, gender and ethnicity. People can be defined by their sexual ori-entation, familial role (mother/father, daughter/son, sister/brother), religion, nationality, ability/disability and age. Including an increasing number of categories, however, makes the concept of intersectional-ity cumbersome to use (McCall 2005; Boris 2005; Davis 2008). Not all differences are similarly important at all times. Which differences are (deemed to be) important depends on who is asking the question, as well as when and where it is asked. The reply to the question ‘who are you?’ differs depending on whether a potential employer or a lover is asking it. Identities are fluid, situational and relational. Migrants can switch between identities depending on, for instance, whether they are at that moment oriented towards the country of origin or settlement (Mahler & Pessar 2006). Nevertheless, it is possible to group and ana-lyse identities and power relations by bracketing time, space and per-sonal or institutional setting. Gender, class and ethnicity are generally accepted as key aspects of identity, and dimensions of durable social inequality (Tilly 1998; McCall 2005; Boris 2005; Davis 2008). Yet each of these categories are of more or less importance in different contexts. As the authors in this volume illustrate, it is possible to identify which categories are made important in political and public debates at certain points in time. Oxford’s chapter illustrates this for sexuality, and Scha-cher does so for religion.
Feminisation of migration
King & Zontini 2000; El-Cherkeh et al. 2004; Kawar 2004; Oso Casas & Garson 2005). Authors use phrases like ‘women workers form the majority in movements as diverse as those of Cape Verdians to Italy, Filipinos to the Middle East and Thais to Japan’ (Castles & Miller 2003: 7-9, 188). The countries mentioned are not chosen randomly, although the phrase ‘as diverse as’ might suggest this. These are the countries in which migrant women do outnumber men. Examples of precisely the opposite could as easily be given. In 2005 men outnumbered women among immigrants in Saudi Arabia (70% men), Cuba (73% men) and Bangladesh (86% men). Note that there is a difference between the first set of countries, which refers to emigrants from one country, and the second set, which speaks on immigrants (presumably from various countries) to one country.
In some countries, the number of documented migrant women has
increased. Data are, however, difficult to interpret. In 1978, Singapore, for instance, introduced the Foreign Maids Scheme, which made it pos-sible for women from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh to enter Singapore as ‘live-in’ domestic workers. As a result, that country’s migrant domestic worker popula-tion grew from 5,000 in 1978 to 150,000 in 2005 (Human Rights Watch 2005: 19). This does not necessarily mean that the actual number of migrant domestic workers increased. The scheme was introduced to counter the exploitation of foreign domestic workers, and registration was part of that effort. The data therefore partly reflect an increase in the number of documented domestic workers. Women who migrated to Singapore as domestic workers prior to 1978 were not registered. Women currently make up half of the migrant population in Singa-pore. There are no data available that allow us to compare the current percentage of migrant women with that of the past.
de Wenden 1998; Biemann 2002; Hoerder 2002: 517-519; Sassen 2003: 61; El-Cherkeh et al. 2004: 13; Yamanaka & Piper 2005; Dodson 2008: 152). As such, the feminisation of migration is linked to problems (Ryan 2002; Lepp 2002; Piper 2003; Dannecker 2005; Labadie-Jackson 2008).
Providing a historical overview of trends in international migration is difficult because many countries either lack a system of continuous registration of international migration or, if they have such a system, they do not process and publish the data. Only a handful of countries gather data on the inflow of foreigners (Zlotnik 1998; Jennissen 2004; Oso Casas & Garson 2005). Claims about the feminisation of migration are based on ambiguous data, weak statistical evidence or no statistics at all (Kempadoo & Doezema 1998; Lepp 2002). A lack of data does not prevent some authors from claiming that the feminisation of (labour) migration has become a well-established fact (Piper 2003: 726). Data that are presented are frequently highly selective. Authors write about feminisation of migration in Australia, for instance, but produce data on the percentage of women among the Asian-born Chinese only (and even those do not pass the 60% mark) (Ryan 2002: 96). Authors sug-gest increases when there are none (Alcalá 2006: 22). Graphs are pre-sented with y-axes that start at 45% and terminate at 55% to empha-sise increases (Orbeta & Abrigo 2009: 7 and 11; Donato et al. 2011). Data refer to labour migration only, or to the migration from specific countries, such as the Philippines. In fact, the Philippine government encourages the migration of women, and the percentage of migrant women is exceptionally high compared to other countries. Even in the Philippines, however, it did not exceed 60% in the period between 1993 and 2007 (Orbeta & Abrigo 2009: 7 and 11).
The literature on the feminisation of migration presents the migra-tion of women as new (Schrover 2013). Such novelty both calls for and justifies specific measures or policies aimed at migrant women. Yet, it is not so much the migration of women that has increased. Rather, there has been an increased focus on migrant women. In migration policies this heightened focus is used to justify restrictions and controls. In this volume, we show how juggling numbers and percentages is a favoured strategy in the problematisation of migration.
Migration patterns, networks and ties
The differences in men’s and women’s migration patterns have often been explained using the concept of perceived profitability; that is, peo-ple move if a cost-benefit analysis points to gains (Stark 1991). This idea is used in the neo-classical, or push-pull, model and the family strategy model (Sjaastad 1962; Stark 1991). These models acknowledge that cal-culations and consequences of a decision can be different for men and women (Brettell 1986). The assumption is that, as a rule, men can earn more than women, and it is therefore advantageous to let men migrate. When women migrate in equal numbers to men, or in greater num-bers, this is explained as a family strategy. It is also interpreted from a remittance perspective. Women may earn less than men but they might send more money home, meaning that it could be more profitable for families left behind if they migrate instead of men (Grasmuck & Pessar 1991; De Jong, Richter & Isarabhakdi 1995; Davis & Winters 2001; Cur-ran 2012). The problem with these models is that it is difficult to assess profitability, because men and women do not have the same (access to) resources, the labour market, power, agency, interests, knowledge and networks. Those factors affect any cost-benefit analysis migrants might make. A decision to migrate is, furthermore, not necessarily a product of collectively made, rational, economic calculations. In some cases it is an individual decision made outside of and against the wishes of the household or family. Fostered within communities of young men, it is borne out of a lust for adventure, which is associated with locally en-trenched masculine ideals (Nobil Ahmad 2008, 2011). Some migrations result in the creation of a culture of migration, in which (temporary) migration is seen as a standard stage of adult life. In Morocco, for in-stance, there are villages where migration is so common among men that those who do not migrate are ridiculed and equated with children, women or the elderly (De Haas & Van Rooij 2010: 45).
1995). Migrant men and women have access to different networks, value those resources differently, have different exchange opportunities and develop different exchange relations (Moch & Fuchs 1993). Networks of immigrant men and women are not the same. Furthermore, non-kin networks of immigrant men and women seldom overlap (Ross 1983). Networks of women tend to be less formalised and less visible than those of men. Women are more inclined to form networks than men, because networks reduce their feelings of vulnerability (Accampo 1993). Immigrant men and women use their networks for different purposes. Women make frequent use of weak ties (Moch 2003b). Men move through the family network to find work, while women move through job networks to find a family (Bertaux-Wiame 1979). Women move and live in familial contexts more often than men (Schrover 2003), and they developed more kin-based networks. Men develop more non-kin net-works. While this all may be true, the networks of men and women are not that different. Benhabib and Resnik (2009) point out that wom-en’s networks consist of dependent children, dependent elderly and the men they are involved with. They fail to point out that this is also largely true for migrant men, whose primary networks are equally formed by children, parents and partners.
Men tend to join or establish organisations that are oriented towards the country of origin, whereas women favour organisations that are aimed at the country of settlement (Jones-Correa 1998). Immigrant men experience status loss due to downward social mobility, which they compensate for by joining organisations where their (former) sta-tus is recognised and bolstered. Those immigrant women who did not work prior to their migration, but enter the workforce in the new coun-try, experience a gain in status (ibid.).
Sensen-brenner 1993). This facilitates the choice to migrate, making migration progressively more likely (Massey 1990). Thus, networks are thought to play a crucial role in reducing perceived vulnerability (Granovet-ter 1973; Grasmuck & Pessar 1991; Moch & Fuch 1993; Curran & Saguy 2001).
This network theory is related to theories on forms of embeddedness or modes of incorporation (Stewart 2005). Migrants may compensate for their lack of embeddedness or status in one sector – for instance, in the labour market – by increasing their embeddedness in another sec-tor, for instance, by maintaining wide networks (Mahler & Pessar 2001; Pessar & Mahler 2003). Differences in how migrant men and women maintain ties with their countries of origin are explained by the fact that doing kinwork, or caring for the maintenance of family relations, is commonly characterised as women’s work – though not only among migrants. Furthermore, differences in ties relate to status loss. In coun-tries with larger numbers of emigrant women, there are discussions about the children who are left behind and about so-called transna-tional mothering (Yeates 2004; Mongaya Hoegsholm 2007; Pajnik & Bajt 2012). Rather surprisingly, this debate is not matched by similar debates about men who leave their children behind, or use of the con-cept of transnational fathering (Kraler et al. 2011).
The literature on migration patterns, networks and ties focuses on the choices and deliberations of migrants, and less on how states (both countries of origin and those of destination) create frameworks in which choices are made. The literature follows political categorisations and hardly discusses issues of choice or deliberation, strategies, networks and ties in the context of refugee migration. According to Boyd & Nowak, Schacher, and Walaardt in this volume, these frameworks are impor-tant, as migrants use strategies, networks and ties in different ways.
The private sphere, prostitution and risk
George 2005; Moya 2007 gives good overview of the literature). In the past, domestic work was important to migrant women, and it remains so today. The labour market is strongly segregated by gender and eth-nicity (Schrover, Van der Leun & Quispel 2007). Migrant women and men both tend to cluster in a restricted number of sectors, but migrant women cluster in fewer sectors than men. The literature on domestic servants is characterised by discussions about restricted rights, poor labour conditions, abuse and exploitation (Constable 1997; Anderson 2000). Much less attention is given to the opportunities that this work offers to migrant women. The huge concentration of research has given domestic service a greater importance than it has in reality and diverts attention away from migrant women’s work in other sectors.
There is an emphasis in the literature on women as trafficking victims (Phizacklea 1998; Soderlund 2005; Gould 2010). This literature shows great continuity since the 1850s, with its focal points on youth, inno-cence, whiteness, corruption and foreignness (Doezema 2005; Moloney 2012). Trafficking is used as a synonym for prostitution, which, in turn, is equated with abuse. The migration of women is described in terms of hardship and suffering, often dramatised with heart-breaking personal stories (Agustín 2003, 2005; Brennan 2004; Haynes 2004; Soderlund 2005; Outshoorn 2005; Doezema 2005). Recently, scholars have taken a critical stance towards this profusion of scholarship about trafficking, which is part of what Agustín (2007) calls ‘a rescue industry’. Authors have pointed out that claims about the number of trafficked women, are based on poor and inadequate research, that all migration of women is regarded as trafficking, and that tragic stories are used to mobilise sup-port for control and restrictions on the mobility of women (Fehér 2000; Kapur 2005; Brennan 2008; Wooditch, DuPont-Morales & Hummer 2009; Deane 2010; Weitzer 2010; Oude Breuil et al. 2011; Brysk 2011; Blanchette & Da Silva 2012). Previous scholars have emphasised that sex-trafficking discourse, involving innocent victims, violated borders and criminality, is part of problematising migration and is used to jus-tify restrictive migration policies (Berman 2003), but that has not led to changes in the literature.
it has been established (MacLeod & Saraga 1988; Connell 1997; Utas 2005). The (often unintended) result is that differences between men and women are accentuated, and the victimhood of women is empha-sised. Sexualisation and victimisation have been used to legitimise gov-ernment policies or the strategies of organisations (including migrant organisations and churches) (Connell 1990). Schrover, Cederberg, and Andreassen address this point in this volume.
Within this victimhood discourse, women are presented as vul-nerable. Vulnerability is the subject of an entire field of study, which developed several decades ago, initially to explain how and why people move in and out of poverty (Beck 1992; Moser 1998; Alwang, Siegel & Jørgensen 2001; Bustamante 2002; Hogan & Marandola 2005). Later, ideas from the field of vulnerability studies were applied to migration research (Waddington & Sabates-Wheeler 2003). Vulnerability is – of course – a staple element in the construction of (Western) femininity, as is the construction of women as mothers and wives, while men are not constructed primarily as vulnerable, or as fathers and husbands. Raissiguier and Van Walsum, Legêne & Jones address this point in this volume.
of ‘third-world women’ as ‘powerless’, ‘exploited’ and ‘sexually harassed’ (Mohanty 1988). ‘Third-world women’ were, as a category, automatically and necessarily defined as religious, as well as oriented toward the fam-ily and the domestic sphere. Their victimisation played a role in the con-struction of a counter identity of ‘Western’ women, who were ev erything that ‘third-world women’ were not (Doezema 2001). Schrover, Boyd & Nowak, and Andreassen build on this idea in this volume.
Victimisation can be used as a successful strategy; it is possible to claim rights for women by presenting them as victims (see Schacher in this volume). The price of this success, however, is that migrant women come to be seen as vulnerable and in need of protection. The ‘success-ful’ use of the victimhood discourse explains a change in migration and integration policy that has taken place in the past decades (Roggeband & Verloo 2007). In the 1970s, integration policy stressed the rights of migrants as distinct from the rest of the people in the receiving soci-ety. In the 1990s, the diversity framework was replaced by a vulner-ability framework, which focused on migrant women, as described by Schrover, Andreassen, and Cederberg in this volume.
Citizenship and residency
of globalisation and the creation of larger political units such as the European Union. Yet, this has not reduced the discursive or moral im-portance attached to citizenship (Bader 1999). Discursive citizenship is a vague and flexible notion (Schinkel 2008). The distinction between internal and external borders can be sharp at the discursive level, but it is not static and it changes continuously over time.
In many countries, women automatically experienced a change in their nationality when they married men with a different nationality than their own (though this was not true for men) (Boris 2005; De Hart 2006). Many countries introduced so-called ‘marriage rules’ and ‘derivative citizenship’ in around 1900, consolidating earlier practices. Derivative citizenship is based on a gendered conception of belonging. Women marrying men outside of their community or nationality are often described in sexually disapproving terms, even if they are in a sta-ble monogamous relationship. That judgement implies that by crossing one boundary – that of ethnicity – they also cross a boundary of moral acceptability (Stoler 1992, 1995; Breger & Hill 1998).
When countries changed rules regarding derivative citizen-ship (Studer 2001; De Hart 2006; Volpp 2006) discussions moved to dependent residency (Sterett 1997; CÔté, Kérisit & CÔté 2001). In the former, women derived citizenship from their husbands, while in the latter women derived the right to remain in a country through their husbands (although in theory husbands could also derive the right to remain through their wives). Discussions on dependent residency arose when possibilities for labour migration were reduced (Schrover et al. 2008; Schrover & Yeo 2010). Debates about derived citizenship were interwoven with those about multiculturalism as Cederberg, Andreas-sen, and Schrover show in this volume.
Veiling
colo-nial authorities in their attempts to legitimise their colocolo-nial rule (Fanon 1965; Abu-Lughod 2002). Modernising, liberating and emancipating Islamic women, by forcing them to unveil, or allowing them to do so, was a key aspect of the colonisers’ claim of moral superiority. In a similar fashion, the us ‘war against terror’ in Afghanistan was justified by emphasising the right of women to discard their burqas (Stabile & Kumar 2005; Van Walsum & Spijkerboer 2007; Bush 2010). The British and French unveiling campaigns were comparable to the 1927 Soviet
Hujum, a campaign in Soviet Central Asia in which mass unveiling was meant to lead to the social and intellectual liberation of women (Kamp 2008). That campaign aimed to enforce and legitimise Soviet rule over Uzbekistan.
Rather surprisingly, current debates in Turkey run counter to debates in Western Europe. The Turkish government first outlawed the wear-ing of headscarves for women workwear-ing in the public sector (as teachers, lawyers and politicians) in 1924, when Atatürk introduced the secular Turkish state (Gökariksel & Mitchell 2005). From the 1980s onwards, this ban increasingly led to debates. In Turkey some women harbour hopes that future membership in the eu might give Turkish women the right to wear headscarves if they wish. This intersects with the paradox-ical situation in which Western feminists occasionally find themselves. While they generally favour women’s choices, they find it very hard to view the wearing of headscarves or other veiling as a choice, despite what is said by the women who make this choice. They find themselves being accused of colonialist paternalism. Furthermore Western femi-nists find themselves allied with Western populist, right-wing politi-cians, who in the Western context, do not generally support women’s rights (Winter 2006).
The move towards placing headscarves and veils at the centre of political debates is part of a shift towards minority integration poli-cies. Yet, such policies have been labelled a failure in several Euro-pean countries, which have moved on to issues of religion rather than class position, discrimination or socio-economic factors. This renders integration a personal choice and removes responsibly from authori-ties (Roggeband & Verloo 2007; see also Cederberg, Andreassen, and Schrover in this volume).
* * *
stock of differences between migrant men and migrant women, and from describing migrants or focusing on the private sphere. We look instead at political and public debates about categorisation, differentia-tion, and how and why boundaries have been drawn and redrawn. As pointed out earlier, our exploration focuses on three primary fields in which this boundary drawing has led to extensive debates: who is a ‘ref-ugee’ (Schacher, Walaardt, Boyd & Nowak, and Oxford), who is ‘family’ (Raissiguier, Van Walsum, Legêne & Jones, and also partly in Oxford), and who has the right to be different according to multicultural policy (Cederberg, Andreassen, and Schrover). The sections that follow pre-sent a state of the art on these points.
State of the art and contributions to the literature: Defining the true refugee
The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees built on ear-lier, ad hoc policies, including those related to Jewish refugees in the 1930s and Armenian refugees in 1917. Policies regarding Armenians, de-scribed by Schacher in this volume, should be viewed in the context of more general developments. Since the 1880s, mobility from Europe has been affected by us restrictions on migration. us authorities wanted to prevent paupers and criminals from arriving by introducing con-trols and barriers at the borders, as well as in the countries of departure (Zolberg 2006). These developments are important for understanding how people fleeing the Armenian genocide from 1917 onwards, were received in the usa and elsewhere, as Schacher describes. Thirty years prior to the 1951 Refugee Convention, policies were not that different, nor were the responses to refugee migration, as Schacher illustrates. Some Armenian refugees were women travelling alone. As in the case of other migrant women travelling alone, this immediately raised sus-picions regarding their involvement in prostitution and other immoral behaviour. Christian relief organisations in Turkey and the usa were well aware of this potential stigma and tried to steer clear of cases that might disadvantage the whole group of refugees.
before the 1951 definition of a refugee came to be accepted, there was a clear idea about who was an ‘honest refugee’. Decision makers involved in the Armenian case were as suspicious as later decision makers. They feared they would be deceived by ‘non-deserving refugees’, who told fabricated stories, masterminded by their (us-based) advocates. Those fears were very similar to suspicions in later periods. Thirdly, policies phrased in gender-neutral terms, such as a literacy test, had divergent consequences for men and women. Women fleeing the Armenian gen-ocide were, to a large extent, illiterate and were disadvantaged by the test. A vague reference in the rulings to religious persecution as the grounds for exemption dampened the gender-specific effects in prac-tice. It further created differences between men and women in how pol-icies were applied: religion surfaced more frequently in women’s cases. Here, there are also clear similarities to later decades: bending the rules in cases involving women proved easier than changing the rules (Schrover 2009b). In the fourth place, civil servants and others were afraid of publicity. Deporting women – especially in the company of their children – led to negative publicity, even in this period when com-munication was slow. Negative publicity could be expected if Chris-tian women were deported to a Muslim country, where, according to newspaper reports, Christians were being systematically discriminated against, killed and deported. Women were at risk of being kidnapped and raped, as well as being forced to marry a Muslim and convert to Islam. Anti-Islam rhetoric, deployed in later decades, was already in full force by 1917, and the stereotypes were the same as those used in pervasive 1990s flight and recue stories (De Hart 2001).
After the Second World War, feelings of guilt and a sense of failure towards Jewish refugees, combined with the geopolitical tensions of the Cold War, led to creation of an international refugee policy. This point has been addressed extensively in the large literature on refugees and asylum seekers (see, amongst others, Grahl-Madsen 1966, 1982-1983a, 1982-1983b, 1983; Holborn 1975; Takkenberg & Tahbaz 1989; Salomon 1991; Loescher 1993; Carruthers 2005). At the time there were still many displaced persons living in camps in Europe. At the Yalta Conference of 1945 it was agreed that displaced persons were to be repatriated to their countries of origin, but Western states refused to repatriate some of those who came from Eastern Europe during or after the war. The continued arrival of Eastern Europeans in the West served as a refuta-tion of communist governments and their policies.
any person who, owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular so-cial group, or political opinion, exists outside the country of his na-tionality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it (art. 1a).
The Convention’s drafters conceived of flight motives as political, public and collective, rather than as personal and private.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, providing asylum to the victims of one’s enemies demonstrated the antagonists’ immoral value system, as Zolberg (2006: 18) emphasised. Over the past 50 years, the number of antagonists, and evils, has increased, changed and blurred. Politi-cally, the benefits of a lenient refugee policy have become less obvious. That has reduced the willingness to deal with the refugee problem at an international level and resulted in a restrictive discourse. While asy-lum cases are no longer used to prove that capitalism trumps commu-nism, they now highlight the failure of the newly decolonised, Islamic or third-world countries to protect their citizens. They are used to con-trast a superior (enlightened) West against a failing Rest.
Differences between men and women refugees or asylum seekers have been addressed in the literature. Under certain conditions, women are much less likely than men to be granted refugee status (cf. Spijker- boer 2000; Calavita 2006). Currently, discussions do not centre on whether the grounds are the same, but on whether they should be, and whether gender-related violence should be grounds for asylum. Gen-der or genGen-der-related harm was absent from the 1951 definition as a category of persecution. Gender-related violence is understood in cur-rent discussions as something that affects women alone. If reference is made to men, it is to homosexuals (Oxford 2005). It is much more common for women than for men to be the victims of sexual violence. Those who have been victims of what is called accidental or arbitrary rape (which is seen as an unfortunate, but common, part of regular warfare) are not regarded as persecuted. Women who were raped in order to retrieve information about their families (such as the wherea-bouts of husbands or sons) were not granted asylum in the past. In recent years, there has been a change in asylum policies and laws. In the usa, immigrant women can gain asylum by proving they have been persecuted on account of female circumcision, honour killings, domes-tic violence, coercive family planning, forced marriages or repressive social norms. This is also true for some European countries, such as Germany. Asylum seekers in the usa stand a better chance of having their request approved if they mention female circumcisions at the hearings rather than explaining their role in a resistance movement. Stories about resistance are almost never acknowledged as grounds for women’s asylum (while they are for men), whereas the mentioning of female circumcision is (Oxford 2005).
never extended civil rights to half of its citizens, simply because they are women.
Women took centre stage in human rights debates and in asylum cases for a few years. This volume adds to the literature by looking spe-cifically at these debates. However, as Boyd & Nowak discuss in this volume, this focus on women was not long-lived, nor did it apply to all refugee groups in equal proportions. Boyd & Nowak describe the Canadian media’s attitudes toward Mexican refugees. Canadians find it difficult to comprehend that a democratic country such as Mexico, with which Canada maintains economic and political ties, would produce refugees. Similarly, European states did not define Portuguese and us citizens as refugees, as Walaardt discusses. Women from Islamic coun-tries more fully embody the victim-refugee image than do Mexican Catholic women subject to domestic violence. Mexico is not defined as a failed state. Yet, a state may provide protection to some of its citizens, but not to all of them. It is precisely this type of failure that shaped the 1951 Refugee Convention. In Canada there is little awareness that the situation for migrant men and women from Mexico might differ, as Boyd & Nowak describe. The current media refugee script focuses on refugee management and reduction, rather than on refugee protection and welcome. The economic costs of accepting what is portrayed as increasing numbers of Mexican refugees or asylum seekers have taken centre stage in public discussions, pushing aside any discussions of political benefits. With potential benefits, the Canadian image of the ‘true’ refugee also shifted.
and migrants move between categories, but concepts and discourses travel as well (Forsdick 2001). Strategies that proved to be successful in one context, were copied, adapted and applied in other contexts. We see similarities between social movements. Refugee war resisters of the 1970s were important to the anti-Vietnam or anti-‘colonial’ war movement. Abused migrant women were important to the women’s liberation movement in the 1980s (Schrover 2009). Gay asylum seek-ers were important to the lgbt (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgen-dered) movement of the 1990s, as Oxford shows in this volume. Over time campaigns became increasingly personalised: personal stories and gruelling details were drawn on to strengthen a case. Advocacy groups instructed asylum claimants so that they could make a success-ful appeal, as they had done with Armenians in 1917.
In 2009, some officials in the uk argued that homosexual asylum seekers might be able to live safely in their country of origin as long as they were ‘discreet’ about their sexual identities. That perspective shared similarities with the highly controversial us military ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy. The argument was clearly inspired by fears of large numbers of homosexuals seeking refuge in Western countries. If they were discreet, officials argued, there would be no well-founded fear of persecution. In a 2009 court case this became known as the ‘Anne Frank’ principle. Requiring discretion from homosexuals would be the same as claiming that Anne Frank would have been safe as long as she remained in her annex (Gower 2010). According to Walaardt, in this volume, references to the Second World War and the Holocaust are strong arguments in refugee claims. In July 2010, a court overturned the argument that homosexuals would be safe if they remained dis-creet. Asylum was granted to homosexuals under the Refugee Con-vention in order to prevent an individual from suffering persecution. Persecution was understood to mean treatment resulting in death, torture or imprisonment, sponsored or condoned by the state. Simple discriminatory treatment on the grounds of sexual orientation, or the risk of family or societal disapproval, did not amount to persecution, a court ruled.
and particularly their well-founded fear of persecution because of that identity. Homosexuality is constructed very differently in various coun-tries. Asylum seekers may have had (occasional) same-sex partners, but need not necessarily identify as homosexuals, or be identified by others as such. However, acknowledging one’s sexual identity is a necessary component of gaining asylum.
Schacher, Walaardt, Boyd & Nowak, and Oxford, in this volume, offer a new perspective on this topic through their analysis of advocates’ organising and executing campaigns on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers, and the consequences of those campaigns. Overall, asylum regimes place a strong emphasis on exceptionalism. As detailed above, all countries fear establishing precedents. As a result, refugee claims are more successful when presented as exceptions, and when campaigns are highly personalised. Furthermore, there has been a strong tendency towards victimisation narratives. Victimisation has been a successful strategy for claiming rights. The price of this success, however, is that migrants came to be seen as vulnerable and in need of protection by the state. Their victimisation played a role in the construction of a counter identity of the ‘Western’ advocates, who formed the support groups. It explains and shapes the link with the rights movements (women’s rights, gay rights). This othering worked as a disadvantage in the long term.
State of the art and contributions to the literature: Defining family
and prostitution. Colonial authorities fought these practices, legitimis-ing their authority on the basis of these efforts (Pedersen 2001).
In the 1960s, babies from Korea were adopted in the usa, and shortly after, also in Europe. The discourse on these adoptions intertwined familial love, child rescuing, anti-communism and us paternalist responsibility. Adoptions became part of the justification for us inter-vention in the region. Adopting Korean babies became the us domes-tic equivalent of fighting communism in Asia. Korea profited finan-cially from what became a well-organised adoption industry. Between 1953 and 2004, 156,000 to 200,000 international adoptions took place in Korea. Some 100,000 children went to the usa and about 5,000 to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Europeans adopted almost 50,000 Korean children (Kim & Carroll 1975; Sarri, Baik & Bombyk 1998; Oh 2005; Kim 2009; Hübinette & Arvanitakis 2012). This migration was unprecedented in nature and scale. Soon other Asian countries started to ‘export’ children. Currently China is the largest supplier of children for adoption. Between 1991 and 2007, American parents adopted almost 60,000 Chinese children, 95% of them girls (Cheng 2007). In the litera-ture on these adoptions, there are no references the Chinese adoption cases of the 1930s.
The current adoption practices are widely accepted. This contrasts starkly with the distrust that migrant families encounter in Europe when they try to bring adopted children or foster children to their new country of residence. Both literatures – that on adoption and that on family migration (for more references, see Kraler et al. 2011; see also Van Walsum, Jones & Legêne in this volume) – are large, but they are seldom combined. Migrant families are regarded with suspicion, and have to prove that children are biologically theirs. The issue is compli-cated by the fact that more than 20, mostly Muslim countries in Asia and Africa (including Algeria, Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco, Afghani-stan, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, PakiAfghani-stan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen) do not recognise the insti-tution of adoption (Indonesia, Tunisia and Turkey do recognise it) (United Nations 2009). Migrants from countries in which adoption has not been formalised cannot bring as family members those children who have been placed in their care.
the framework of family reunification, thereby depriving many fami-lies of existing care arrangements (Grillo 2008). Migrant famifami-lies also found that leaving their biological children behind in the care of others for long periods of time led to debates about so-called ‘broken bonds’. In some cases the idea that ties had ceased to exist after years of being apart resulted in the loss of the rights for children to join their families (Benhabib & Resnik 2009: 235; Schrover 2009b).
In the 1980s and 1990s, several Strasbourg international court cases revolved around the right to family life (Schrover 2009b). Article 8 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (adopted by the Council of Europe in 1950) states that chil-dren have the right to grow up with their families. What was disputed in these court cases was the right of children to join their families; the parents, it was suggested, had the choice of leaving in order to reunite with their children.
Closely related to these debates were cases in which children were brought to the country of origin of one parent (mostly the father), against the wishes of the other parent (mostly the mother). Betty Mahmoody’s book, on which the 1991 film ‘Not Without My Daughter’ was based, is emblematic of both the type of stories and the media cov-erage. Mahmoody’s book, and several others like hers, presented West-ern women who had married non-WestWest-ern men as victims, but also as survivors who stood up for themselves and their children against alien (mostly Islamic) cultures of oppression (De Hart 2001). The parent-hood rights of women, especially if they were Western, trumped those of men, especially if non-Western.
appropri-ated this model. Other family systems were allowed to exist alongside the nuclear model. Those included Hindu and Islam marriage models, the dual marriage structure and the extended family. In some of these family systems, the husband-wife-children model was absent. In the Creole working-class matrifocal family, for example, mother-child and sibling relationships formed the durable and dependable network. They could function as the locus for matiwerk relationships: socio-economic support networks between women, in which ‘same-sex’ relations could occur. Before Suriname’s 1975 independence, ‘parallel’ family systems had been enacted in law, for example, in the case of marriage in accord-ance with Hinduism or Islam. Laws recognised the authority of women over their biological children (which is of particular importance for matrifocal families), along with the rights of foster children and con-cubinage.
In debates leading to Suriname’s independence, Dutch authorities sought to foster a smooth transition to independence (unlike the tran-sition of the Dutch East Indies to independent Indonesia, which was far from smooth). This, along with the leniency that Dutch authorities had demonstrated towards mixing and plurality in the colonial context, led to the inclusion of a remarkable article in the final text of the treaty between Suriname and the Netherlands. That treaty addressed the admission of their respective citizens, effective on 25 November 1975. Article 5 allowed for admission of the person with whom a citizen of one of the State Parties, legally resident on the territory of the other, ‘has a long lasting and exclusive personal relationship’. This rule also applied to same-sex relationships. It was the first statutory ruling in Dutch law in which persons involved in non-marital relationships were granted the same rights as married couples, and it allowed for the migration of people involved in same-sex relations. According to Van Walsum, Jones & Legêne, in contrast with the assumptions of earlier studies, defini-tions of family can travel both ways in the migration process. This is surprising, since in the colonial context marriages, especially when they were regarded as mixed – were looked upon with suspicion, or met with disapproval. Rather paradoxically, the disapproval continued, despite the redefinition of family, as Van Walsum, Jones & Legêne show.
and were abusing the arranged marriage system (Lutz 1997b; Kofman 1999). Current discussions equate marriage migration with arranged and forced marriages. Governments have increasingly introduced age and income bars to restrict marital migration. Through income requirements, family migration is collapsed into economic migration, with an emphasis on fraud and misuse, moving it away from debates about (human) rights.
Migrating men are often suspected of having economic motives for marriage, rather than migrating for love. That is especially the case when they come from poor countries, are low skilled and marry non-migrant women. Thus, ethnicity, class and gender intersect. Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany screen prospective marriages with non-eu spouses in an attempt to discover fictitious marriages, using criteria that have been disputed in court (De Hart 2006; Kontos, Haferburg & Sacaliuc 2006). Authorities examine age differences between partners and their ability to communicate and try to establish how well partners know each other. Denmark, Germany, Austria, France, the Nether-lands and the uk have introduced age restrictions (with minimum ages of 18 to 24), housing and income requirements, and tests to be taken before migration. Yet, migrants who are well educated, highly skilled and wealthy can circumvent the increasingly complicated restrictions on family migration.
Recently, the concept of ‘love exiles’ has appeared in debates. That term refers to people who migrate to a country where they can marry, often because they are prevented from marriage in their country of residence (Wieringa 2011). This typically applies to marriages between same-sex partners. Differences in laws between neighbouring countries lead to another type of love exiles as well. Migrants, who cannot marry in the Netherlands, move to Belgium, take up temporary residence, marry and after a while move back to the Netherlands. This is called the Belgium route. Similarly there is Irish route, which some uk migrants use, and a so-called Swedish model, which is used by migrants in Den-mark. In recent discussions of this type of migration the emphasis has shifted from understanding family migration as a spin-off of labour migration, to portraying family migration in terms of exile, adopting the language of refugee migration.1 The Love Exile Foundation in the
usa writes, ‘Love Exiles is giving attention to the hidden group of refu-gees because of lawlessness at home elsewhere “in exile” life’.2 And:
this, taking our property and skills to benefit the countries where our families are recognized. We are the Love Exiles.3
By using refugee rhetoric, rather than terms associated with labour migration, the organisations and advocates seek to reinforce their plea. Raissiguier, in this volume, adds to this literature by examining how family life became contested in France. She illustrates that the fam-ily was defined within racialised paradigms. French national culture, not race, was central to debates about French identity. For decades the dominant notion was that being French was something that could be learned. French peasants had learned to become French in the past, and immigrants could do so as well. This ‘open’ national identity did not mean that subcultures were respected, or accepted, as was the case within a multicultural model (Beriss 2000). Recent changes are strik-ing because for decades France has prided itself on its ‘French model’ of socialising and assimilating via schools, the military, employment and workers’ unions. However, as Raissiguier points out, the old French model had elements of exclusion, based on ethnicity and gender, within its relatively generous and liberal understanding of nation and national-ity. These exclusionary elements were de-emphasised when ‘the French model’ was contrasted with the German one and found ‘generous’ in comparison.
according to Raissiguier. Because of these changes, a social unit that is essentially private – family – has become very public and a subject of state concern.
In France, ‘family’ has, for migrants, been re-labelled and narrowed down to an exclusively biological definition. That redefinition was made possible partly by dna testing. Recently, in Norway technical possibil-ity and distrust have led to dna testing of spouses who are believed actually to be siblings (udi 2012). Suspicion leads to testing, and testing to more suspicion.
The authors in this volume make a vital contribution to the litera-ture by showing how, when and why ‘family’ has been redefined. The concept is not as static as policymakers would like it to be or as previ-ous authors have believed it to be. Postcolonial trauma led to a surpris-ing widensurpris-ing of the concept of family, as Van Walsum, Jones & Legêne describe, and new techniques for narrowing it, as Raissiguier points out, while in all cases distinctions are made according to class, gender, ethnicity, religion and skill level.
State of the art and contributions to the literature: Defining difference
Beginning in the 1960s, in numerous countries, including the uk, Swe-den, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, the usa and Canada, mul-ticulturalism emerged as an ideology and a policy for managing the cultural diversity that had resulted from migration. There is a large lit-erature on this (see, e.g., Runblom 1994; Volpp 1996; Moller Okin 1999; Shachar 2001-2002; McGoldrick 2005; McKerl 2007: 204-205; Joppke 2007). Originally, multiculturalism held that there could be equal-ity, despite difference. Later, this was largely replaced by the idea that equality could occur only without difference (Coleman 1996; Kurien 2004). In all countries, debates about migrant women played a crucial role when policies shifted. In this volume, Cederberg, Andreassen, and Schrover address changes in policy and in debates, which were similar in the three countries described by the respective authors (Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark). Those changes are explained in the cur-rent literature mostly from a country-specific perspective.
1994; Phillips 2003: 517; Uitermark, Rossi & Van Houtum 2005: 624; Salaff & Chan 2007: 126; Bhabha 2009: 57). Multiculturalism was mor-ally and politicmor-ally acceptable because ethnic minorities were seen as actual groups with inherent characteristics (Verkuyten & Brug 2004). It demanded the construction of a public ethnic identity (as opposed to a private one), and group formation on the basis of perceived cultural similarity (Kurien 2004).The struggle for recognition spurred ethnic formation, organisation and mobilisation. Crucial to multiculturalism is that integration was seen as a group process, which implied subsidies for immigrant organisations.
In the 1970s, Sweden was generous, relative to other countries, in granting rights to foreign citizens. As Cederberg in this volume describes, Sweden’s social democratic ideology, the country’s corpo-ratist structure and the strong position of trade unions explain this. Unions and social democratic governments were concerned about workers’ rights and wage-dumping. Therefore, the Swedish govern-ment granted immigrants rights in the form of employgovern-ment, social welfare and political participation. Immigrant organisations were con-sidered important and were given state support. Consequently, immi-grants pursued their cultural and political interests; they also acquired the attitudes and skills needed to do so. Multiculturalism in Sweden (as elsewhere) implied collective rights for migrants and collective identi-ties. Gender roles and family relations, which were labelled traditional and unequal, were nonetheless seen as ‘authentic’ elements of these collective identities. Rather paradoxically, Swedes pride themselves on gender equality, and that attitude constitutes an important element of Swedish identity. In the early days of multiculturalism, differences were introduced, maintained and subsidised. They were problematised only decades later.
were formulated in the 19th century within a colonial context. That view portrayed the superior Christian societies as the rescuers and liberators of Muslim women from Muslim men (Said 1978; Stabile & Kumar 2005). These ideas were integrated into a perspective in which European women serve as the standard against which women from elsewhere were measured (Lutz 1997b). Muslim women are currently viewed, in a number of North-Western European countries, as the prototype of migrant women. They are perceived as exploited victims, handicapped by their cultures of origin. Islam and Western values are presented as incompatible (Korteweg & Yurdakul 2009). Issues such as the wearing of headscarves hold centre stage in current integration debates (Molokotos Liederman 2000; McGoldrick 2006; Brems 2006). The debates are characterised by gross overestimates of the number of women wearing headscarves. This discourse – to which some West-ern feminists and right-wing politicians contribute – uses well-worn stereotypes about non-Western women as religious, family-oriented, traditional and backward (Mohanty 1988).
After the headscarf debates dissipated (and after new laws had been introduced in several European countries), attention moved to the wearing of face-covering veils or niqabs. This practice was presented as the next step away from European values. The niqab was seen as a refusal to integrate, and a security risk, linked to radical Islam and ter-rorism (Herrera & Moors 2003). Andreassen, in this volume, describes the problematisation of veiling in Denmark. Crucial in this debate is that niqabs are frequently referred to as burqas. A burqa is the tradi-tional Afghani garment that covers face and body. In contrast, niqabs cover the face, except for the eyes. The use of the inaccurate term is not simply a result of ignorance. By using the term burqa, an associa-tion is made between the wearing of veils and the highly subjugated position of Afghani women and other problems plaguing that coun-try. In Denmark – and in Europe as a whole – very few women wear burqas, though some wear niqabs. Their numbers are grossly overesti-mated and do not warrant widespread political and public controversy, as Andreassen shows.
consti-tution. The Conservative Party realised that the proposal was unlikely to pass, but sought to benefit politically from suggesting the legislation. In the end the Conservative Party did not propose the ban in parlia-ment, but the right-wing populist Danish People’s Party planned to. It is notable that this party, and others like it elsewhere, argue for such bans by claiming that they favour equality and women’s rights. How-ever, these parties have in the past not voted in favour of laws or pro-posals aimed at limiting the oppression of women or increasing gender equality. They advocate women’s rights and feminism only when it can be used as an anti-Muslim tool. In the veiling debates, ‘being Danish’ became synonymous with practicing gender equality, despite the fact that gender discrimination in Denmark continues to exist. By argu-ing that others are not practicargu-ing gender equality because of veilargu-ing, anti-veiling policies become a tool for excluding Muslims, especially women, from participating equally in Danish society.
Schrover, in this volume, describes developments similar to those in Denmark and Sweden. In the Netherlands multiculturalism in part builds on older Dutch ideas about ‘living apart together’. This rendered multiculturalism acceptable to Dutch society, but also made it blind to differences between the older forms of separatism and those related to migrants. Within Dutch multicultural policy, immigrant organisa-tions were subsidised, as was common in many countries. Subsidies were granted to a Turkish women’s organisation in the Netherlands as well. When ideas about multiculturalism and policies regarding sub-sidies changed, and many of the subsub-sidies were cut or disappeared, the Turkish women’s organisation continued to be subsidised because the women were believed to be ‘triple disadvantaged’: as women, as migrants and as Muslims. Because the Turkish woman’s organisation was one of the few organisations still subsidised, it became the object of a hostile takeover. In the case of the Turkish women’s organisation, per-ceptions of a coherent and unified entity and the belief in an underlying essence, along with the search for ‘authentic’ cultural differences and public ethnic identities, denied differences within groups and increased competition between groups.
Sec-ondly, there were cases related to so-called ‘honour killings’. From the mid-1970s onwards, crimes of passion among Turks were discussed in very different terms than those among non-Turks. Again, the emphasis was on fundamental differences, which very much fitted ideas about multiculturalism.
Cederberg, Andreassen, and Schrover describe aspects of those debates as country specific, but others are shared, despite differ-ences between the three countries described. In all of the countries, the debate about multiculturalism eventually became a debate about Islam. Discussions about how migrants were different, or how different they should be allowed to be, progressed from subsidies for immigrant organisations (which enabled migrants to maintain ‘their culture’) to discussions about Swedishness, Dutchness and Danishness. Static ideas about migrants’ culture led to static ideas about the dominant culture. In all of these countries, gender equality was seen as key to the domi-nant culture, and as lacking in the immigrants’ own culture. In all three countries right-wing parties that had in the past opposed or ignored women’s rights came out in support of gender equality when it con-cerned Muslim migrants.
Final remarks
Notes
1 See www.loveexiles.org/home.htm (accessed 3 September 2012).
2 See http://madikazemi.blogspot.nl/2004/05/launch-of-love-exiles-group.html (accessed 3 September 2012).
3 See http://loveexiles.wordpress.com/tag/uafa/ (accessed 3 September 2012).
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